Commercial internationalisation : a case of community colleges in Hong Kong

Abstract

Internationalisation of community colleges has become an important agenda item in the strategic development of higher education in Hong Kong. The local community colleges played a crucial role in enhancing access to Hong Kong’s post-secondary education when they emerged in 2000. Participation rates increased from 30% in 2000 to 60% in 2005 and further increased to 70+% in 2016. Eighteen years later, however, the community colleges face a major threat from market volatility and institutional extinction or downsizing as demographic decline looms larger on the horizon and is promising to intensify in the next few years (the number of school leavers is expected to drop from 52,000 in 2018 to 42,800 in 2022. The number was 70,000 in 2013). Furthermore, the government has begun to intervene in the market by implementing different policies that are unfavourable to community colleges. Hong Kong community colleges, as self-financing institutions, have to make major decisions about their programme delivery, budgets, personnel and organisational commitments in order to survive. As their dependence on local students as critical resource providers begins to change, the community colleges must rethink their strategies for collaborations and competition with universities and colleges at home and abroad. Internationalisation of the student body and outreach to neighbouring jurisdictions have emerged as possible institutional instruments of change. Previous literature has discussed the roles of community colleges in creating more access in post-secondary education. The studies overlooked major changes in the policy framework of Hong Kong, and left undiscussed the changing resource dependencies in the local institutional economies and administrative frameworks. This study will fill the gap by exploring the major forces and sources of commercially-driven internationalisation in Hong Kong community colleges. The data for this study is provided through an in-depth case study of a local leading community college which was established in the early 2000s. Data is collected by document review and interviews with major stakeholders of the college. Resources dependence theory guides through the data analysis on how the college manages resources. The study finds that there is no systematic internationalisation strategy in the investigated college though different internationalisation elements (e.g. non-local students and staff, English language policy) are present in it. Stakeholders’ views on internationalisation are also disparate. The study finds that academic merits come first when considering internationalisation benefits. Diversification of resources through recruitment of non-local students, especially from Mainland China, takes place as a way to explore new markets. As the case findings show, the exploration requires substantial initial investment and the outcomes are uncertain. This study enriches the knowledge on the internationalisation practices in a self-financing community college in Hong Kong. Initially designed to serve local communities, the college is now looking towards global outreach in order to secure sustainable institutional development. This study provides an interesting cultural perspective on resource dependency and shows how a college can diversify, level and pool stakeholder interests in order to manage survivability and avoid dependency on one particular stakeholder.